Kingston A400 120Gig SSD and a MDD Dual 1.42Ghz running MacOS9

[Jakl]

Bought one of these SSD’s 120gb link here:

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Kingston-A400-SSD-240GB-120GB-480GB-Solid-State-Drive-Disk-Hard-HDD-SATA-3/372524561060?_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIM.MBE%26ao%3D2%26asc%3D20161027085944%26meid%3D592ba0d4714f46079cc2e370e62d0685%26pid%3D100623%26rk%3D4%26rkt%3D6%26mehot%3Dpp%26sd%3D254177690787%26itm%3D372524561060&_trksid=p2047675.c100623.m-1

Connected to my Seritek 1eSE2 PCI card(1.5Gbits/sec) in a MDD G4 - tried to format the SSD, or install Macos9, even Macosx with no luck whatsoever. Error was could not unmount hard drive.

Moved the SSD to Mac Pro and formatted it there and put Apple Partition Map on it.

Took the SSD back to my MDD G4 and connected it to the Seritek card and tried to install the 2 operating systems - still no luck. Tried both ports on the Seritek esata card still no luck. Same error - could not unmount hard drive.

Attached the SSD to a PATA to SATA adapter on the IDE cable/100 ATA bus in the MDD partitioned the SSD in 2 - os9 and OSX - then booted up and everything went well. A couple of boots later and the speed kicked in.

Since I had installed the OS’s I took the SSD off the PATA to SATA adapter and then tried to use the SSD on the Seritek card. The machine would stall on start up and not even go past loading the first extension in OS9 or not go any further than the Apple start up wheel in OS 10.4.11.

Put the SSD back on the PATA to SATA converter and the machine booted up fine and is working great.

Wonder what the difference is between the Seritek sata card and Pata to Sata adapter card?? Have never had any problems with the Seritek card ever - even am running a 500gb 'normal' sata HD as I'm writing this now with no probs at all.

And BTW using MacTrons Application on his recovery CD I got a reading average 83mb/s read/write for the Kingston A400 SSD on the Pata to Sata adapter - which is okay for me at the moment.

[kwiatki75]

i have also SSD A400 kingston disk and this controller
https://www.digitus.info/de/produkte/computer-zubehoer-und-komponenten/computer-zubehoer/io-karten/ds-33101-1/?PL=pl
this controller was flashed by new rom wiebe (sil 3112) and its working great.

[Jakl]

Hi kwiatki75 have you tested how fast the SSD is with that card?

Just interested how much more it would go compared to the average 83mb/sec mine
does with the pata to sata adapter.

[kwiatki75]

Speed was measured in Xbench 1.3
              Sequential   
         Uncached Write   90.27 MB/sec [4K blocks]
         Uncached Write   109.98 MB/sec [256K blocks]
         Uncached Read   33.55 MB/sec [4K blocks]
         Uncached Read   122.15 MB/sec [256K blocks]
      Random   
         Uncached Write   37.40 MB/sec [4K blocks]
         Uncached Write   104.53 MB/sec [256K blocks]
         Uncached Read   19.49 MB/sec [4K blocks]
         Uncached Read   97.26 MB/sec [256K blocks]

[Jakl]

Thanks for that info kwiatki75
Interesting to see that there is only around 20mb/sec difference to the pata - sata adapter.

Am quite happy with my average of around 83mb/sec with the adapter for now until I
need heaps of speed.

An older intel SSD of mine was doing similar to your results as well.

[kwiatki75]

This card is "only" PCI 32bit. Maybe if it would be 64bit it would be faster.

[Astroman]

I'm no hardware expert, but even the most high speed PCI solution will (have to) deliver to an OS that doesn't know about anything faster than PATA transfers.

All my SSDs under OS9 perform fairly low in transfer speed, but are virtually noise free.
Most of them are are prone to immediate failure if disaster strikes - which happened a couple of times right out of the blue with no obvious reason.
It doesn't matter - for size is small and a system backup is restored in minutes.
This system doesn't change anyway and data (mostly audio) is stored elsewhere.

[refinery]

Connected to my Seritek 1eSE2 PCI card(1.5Gbits/sec) in a MDD G4 - tried to format the SSD, or install Macos9, even Macosx with no luck whatsoever. Error was could not unmount hard drive.

SSDs are funky on these older machines. Only way I have found to make them reliable is to format them in OSX 10.4 Tiger, making sure to check the include OS9 drivers box (the format you did on the mac pro i guarantee did not include the OS9 drivers)
OS9 will not format it correctly. neither will later versions of OSX. You need to format it in Tiger, maybe Leopard but ive honestly never tried it.

I have four SSDs running in four different OS9 macs, all set up this way, and they have no issues working on either onboard using IDE adapter or with Seritek cards (I have two), one of which is the exact same machine you're using, a 1.42 MDD.

[rpschultz13]

Just bought a dual 867 MDD and want to get a 120GB SSD for it. Based on this thread, what do you recommend? Refinery recommended this IDE-SATA adapter:
<https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Drive-Optical-Adapter-Converter/dp/B00EOJNGC2/ref=sr_1_3?crid=1K7JNTEJH4FZM&keywords=startech+ide+to+sata+adapter&qid=1554407125&s=gateway&sprefix=startech+ide+%2Caps%2C180&sr=8-3>

Any suggestions on a good inexpensive SSD? I don't need super speed, any decent SSD will work for what I'm doing.

The machine comes with 10.5.5. Can I format it from 10.5.5, then install OS 9 on it?

[Jakl]

I know that the Kingston A400 SSD works with this adapter(see jpeg attached) on my MDD. And its quick enough for me at this time running at 83mb/s for now.

I have never used the convertor your link points to.

##Edited -- Changed picture below, previous one too small.

[refinery]

there's lots of these kinds of adapters out there, most of them cheap, and unfortunately, most are cheaply built. i had one completely separate the SATA connector from the circuit board when i tried to disconnect the drive. I just recommended the startech because ive found them to be of consistently high build quality. of course with everything YMMV.

[FdB]

See: http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,4865.msg35421.html#msg35421